His mother-in-law sat on a little stool in front of the fireplace, staring down at a patch of herringbone floor pattern as if she herself had the diagnosis. The hatred she felt for him was comical. Barry had never hated another person as much as she hated him. He probably couldn’t even muster that much dislike. His whole life had been about making friends.
“You know something?” Barry said to Seema’s mother. “The lavender spices I got you are meant to promote relaxation.”
Seema’s mother lifted her head and stared directly over Barry’s left shoulder. He was convinced an innocent vase in her line of sight was ready to shatter.
“So we hear you’ve been on quite a journey!” Seema’s father said.
“Just needed to meet with some pension funds in person,” Barry said. Seema’s mother snorted at the lie. He couldn’t quite gauge Seema’s expression. It was cloudy at best. “But I’m back now. Back for good. I missed my family. Family is everything.”
As if on cue, Novie walked Shiva into the living room. The boy ran to his grandfather immediately and they locked their fingers into a W. Barry was both amazed by how the boy related to Seema’s father and saddened that he could not produce the same result. “You know what,” he announced to everyone, but mostly to Seema’s mom. “I’m going to teach Shiva how to swim! I’ve read on the Internet that swimming can really help children with his profile.” Shiva and the grandfather had now separated their Ws and were filtering light through their fingers. “Oh,” Barry said. “I didn’t know we were allowed to do that sort of thing. Isn’t that called something? Reinforcing stereotypical behavior?”
“Shiva,” Novie said, “why don’t you come play with your daddy?”
“Yes, I can make a W with my fingers, too!” Barry said.
But the boy did not want to leave his grandfather’s side. “Look, Shiva,” Barry said. “Look what I brought with me!” And he took off the Tri-Compax he was wearing. “Watch! Daddy’s watch. Wa-wa-wa-wa-watch.”
Shiva finally walked over to his father. He still had the sweet maple-syrup smell of childhood, if not more of it. Brown hair draped the length of his large forehead. His teeth were perfectly white and straight. A fucking stunner of a kid. The diagnosis just wasn’t fair. “Wa-wa-wa-wa-watch,” Barry kept saying. “And guess what? ‘Watch’ starts with W!”
The child took the watch and shook it, as if trying to get the second hand to move, and then started to cry. “It’s broken,” Barry said. “But Daddy will fix it. Daddy will take it to a shop.” But Shiva continued to weep inconsolably. He dropped the watch and ran past Novie into one of the cavernous hallways, as if seeking a further absence of light and sound and Barry. “Well,” Barry said. “Looks like I have a lot to learn from Grandpa.”
“I would be happy to share my findings,” Seema’s father said, in his usual overly formal way. Meanwhile, Seema’s gaze shifted from her father to her husband and back. When she smiled, her chin wrinkled in a way that wasn’t particularly pretty but was hopelessly real, like a portal into a future older self. She was smiling at him now as she led him out of the apartment. “I know that wasn’t easy with my mom,” she said, “but you did well.” So now they were aligned against her mother. Barry couldn’t think of a better development. At the door, she let him squeeze her tight denim-clad bottom as she kissed him, and the more he squeezed the more he felt deflated and in love. My life is starting again, Barry thought. Not going to prison. Reborn. Reborn.
* * *
—
ON ELECTION Day, Joey Goldblatt of Icarus Capital Management threw a party at his Fifteen Central Park West duplex. There were two bars at opposite corners of the five-thousand-square-foot spread, one serving the Nasty Woman, a lemon-vodka concoction, and the other the Bad Hombre, a tequila-based drink. “I don’t like that both drinks are named after things Trump said,” Seema was yelling loudly over the din of the partygoers and the voices of the cable news announcers blasting from the speakers. “It’s like the only things that matter in this election are what he says.”
“He won’t matter ever again once they call Florida!” Barry yelled, and they both kissed hard. Hillary’s victory felt like it might seal the deal not just for their country but for their relationship as well. He was banking on getting laid with his wife tonight.
“Take it to a hotel room, horndogs!” Joey Goldblatt shouted.
“That’s my plan!” Barry shouted back. Joey’s latest divorce had just been finalized, and he was in a particularly good mood. He kept telling people how he had voted for Gary Johnson, because he found both Hillary and Trump detestable, even though he liked how the latter would “simplify the tax plan.”
Later in the evening Barry watched Seema talking with the other hedge-fund wives. They must have heard the rumors that she ratted him out, but her good humor and bravado suggested the marriage was totally secure. He even heard her mention that she was thinking of getting a job at a law firm, which was news to him. He liked the idea that she was there for Shiva, but he would support her going back to work, too, if she wanted. If Hillary could do it, why couldn’t she? They were living in a new world. Most of the young wives at the party were their husbands’ second or third, and Barry was proud that he had waited until he was almost forty to get married and would now have just one wife for the rest of his life.
He ran into a former investor in This Side of Capital, one who was not involved in any legal action against him, and, with a hand to his heart, talked about his trip across America on the Greyhound and how that trip had “chastened” him. The investor was a drunk young Chinese guy, a Jeff Park type, and he responded well to Barry’s new narrative, even though at the end of the conversation Barry had to promise him fifty grand toward a new organization trying to get more Asian Americans elected to higher office.
He went around the room talking about his Greyhound trip and being chastened and pledging money to different causes, and with each person he spoke to he felt his pitch was being perfected. “A one-eyed Mexican fell asleep on my shoulder and the bus nearly swerved into a ditch.”
“No fucking way!”
“And this gorgeous black girl in Mississippi, well, let’s just say I had to stop her before things got out of hand. But she was very sweet. I felt chastened.”
“You’re insane, you know that? Hey, congrats on beating the feds!”
“Yeah, we thought you might have to join Joey’s ankle bracelet club!”
“You guys are too much,” Barry said, toasting with his Bad Hombre. By the eighth person, he had this flash of starting a new multistrategy fund. Maybe he would call it Last Tycoon Capital or something like that. Funny if it were another Fitzgerald title.
As the first results started coming in, he found Seema being hit on by a tall emerging-markets guy wearing a shiny new Rolex GMT in white gold and not-so-gently pried her away. The guy actually moaned some as he watched Seema depart, and that made Barry hot. They were standing by a window; the park was this dark mysterious space beneath them surrounded by the lights of the world’s first- or second-most-important city, depending on what you thought of Brexit’s impact on London. The historic nature of the moment proved overwhelming. “You know something,” Barry said to his wife, “I love going out with you, but I miss Shiva, even when I don’t see him for a single day.” Barry sort of believed his own words. They kissed. A tiny pocket of drool had gathered in one of the corners of Seema’s mouth. He minded that a little. “I love the idea of you working,” he said. “When we started dating, I loved seeing you in a suit.”
“You’re getting a bit drunkie,” Seema said. Drunkie. That was something her friend Tina or Lina from Brooklyn liked to say. They should have invited her, but she was probably at a hipster thing in Brooklyn. They kissed, sloppily.
“I don’t want to be away from Shiva too much,” she said. “Every minute matters.”
“You’re such a go
od mother.” Barry was truly drunk now. “I know you don’t like me to talk about it, but I saw so much bad parenting on my Greyhound trip.”
“Yeah, shut up about the bus, Barry. And keep kissing me, please.”
It happened quickly. The energy in the room began to flag. It was mostly feminine energy. About half of the male attendees were secret Trump supporters—many hoping for tax breaks—but the women were all on the same page. People were gathering around the monitors tuned to CNN and MSNBC. The nation’s southernmost state was being mentioned with an increasing sense of urgency. “Florida.” “Florida?” “Florida!”
“No, it’s okay if we lose Florida!” Barry shouted. “It’s the firewall we have to look at. Pennsylvania! Michigan!” He had done his homework, but so had everyone else. The bartender couldn’t make Nasty Women fast enough, as if that could help things. Seema smiled, but he noticed that she was breathing heavily. Her fight-or-flight response was not ideal. He kept rubbing her hand and kissing her cheek. He wasn’t sure which of them he was trying to comfort.
Closer to 10:00 P.M. the New York Times needle began to swing from “Likely” Clinton to “Leaning” Clinton to “Tossup” to “Likely” Trump to “Very likely Trump.” The markets were starting to tank. “Thank God we’ve got a lot of shorts, a lot of hedges!” Joey Goldblatt shouted into his face. Barry wished he still had a fund to worry about—This Side of Capital was nearly dissolved—at least that would take his mind off of what was happening, give him a set of actions to consider for the next morning. He thought of Trump mocking a disabled man, those fake twitches. No, this could not be happening. He had always wanted to spit in the faces of liberals who kept calling everyone they disagreed with a “fascist,” even liberals like his wife. But now?
“I want to go home,” Seema said, miraculously sober. She squeezed his hand hard to show that she meant it. Others seemed to have the same idea. A mass stampede was under way. Joey Goldblatt and his nineteen-year-old-looking new girlfriend were trying to stanch the flow at the elevators, but people needed something familiar at this point, their families, their servants, their homes. Barry had always loved taking a cab through Central Park at night; it felt like driving through a darkened canyon with occasional glimpses of Midtown’s towers, the glowing civilization just out of reach. But tonight the skyline looked hollow and empty, the dark apartments free of their Russian and Saudi masters.
“Why don’t you come and stay over tonight?” he said.
“I don’t think so,” she said. “I think I want to be alone.”
“Right now is when you don’t want to be alone. We need to get through this together.”
They went back and forth; he found himself begging for her to stay with him, throwing himself at her as if he were a horny sad-sack teenage suitor. She claimed that she had to take Shiva to some therapy first thing in the morning.
“You’re treating me like this is my fault,” Barry said. “How is this my fault?”
“It’s not all about you,” she said. “I promise.”
He tried to sleep, but there were ambulance sirens and the thwump thwump of helicopters, as if there was a national emergency happening right outside his window. Barry had had his suite outfitted with roses and chocolates; it was corny, but he wanted her to know that he wouldn’t take their lovemaking for granted. The room was hot, but Barry curled in on himself as if a new ice age were beginning. He didn’t want to check the results on his phone. HEY, he texted Seema, SORRY IF I CAME ON TOO STRONG. She didn’t text back.
The next day they knew it was true. Donald J. Trump, the deeply troubled New York businessman, would be their president. Barry didn’t want to stay cooped up in his suite with the cable news going all day. He decided to walk the streets of the city, hoping that Seema would soon respond to his text. It was an appropriately rainy and gloomy day, and a group called the Auburn Seminary was handing out sunflowers to mournful New Yorkers in Washington Square Park. Barry imagined this was what Paris might have felt like after the Germans had slithered into the city. NYU students were singing and crying together. Barry noticed a smug asshole was wearing a BERNIE COULD HAVE WON T-shirt. A small group of smiling cops appeared impervious to the desolation around them.
The Wednesday farmers market at Union Square was shrouded in fog. Some rumbling of protest was building, and he could hear the drawl of helicopters up above. Young people were carrying ragtag signs reading LOVE TRUMPS HATE, FREE HUGS, POC AND LGBTQPOC LIVES MATTER. Barry remembered the UTEP Filipina laughing at him for using the term “POC.” He felt both with the protestors and apart from them. He remembered the cattle cars on the overhead projector of Layla’s Holocaust class. He started texting Seema obsessively.
WE’LL GET THROUGH THIS.
WE HAVE THE MEANS AND WE HAVE EACH OTHER.
SHIVA’S GOING TO BE OKAY. HE’LL KNOW A BETTER WORLD.
WHAT DID I DO WRONG?
WHY ARE YOU TAKING IT OUT ON ME?
YOU’RE LIKE YOUR MOTHER SOMETIMES.
MEAN AND COLD FOR NO REASON.
DOMINEERING AND WITHDRAWN.
I’M SORRY, I DIDN’T MEAN THAT.
REALLY, I JUST GOT EMOTIONAL. I MISS YOU.
LAST NIGHT I WANTED TO MAKE LOVE TO YOU SO BADLY.
I DON’T KNOW HOW TO MAKE THE HEART SYMBOL, BUT HEART HEART HEART HEART HEART HEART.
HELLO?
He sat on a Union Square Park bench next to some high-school kids wearing all black and eating burritos. They reeked of hormones, onions, and pot. They were white and Asian and a little alternative, maybe goth. All of them had buds in their ears and were both present and not, which seemed like a good place to be on November 9, 2016. Barry imagined them growing older together like siblings, being there for one another. Who would do the same for Shiva? Would Barry?
These kids would already be in college by the time Trump left office. If he left office. No matter what they did or whom they loved or who they became, Donald Trump would dominate at least a part of their lives. He would try to drag them down to his level. That’s what he did. Barry’s phone pinged. He whipped it out of his pocket too quickly and dropped it on the concrete. The high-school kids looked at him and laughed, but good-naturedly, because they were sweet multicultural kids who probably played whatever version of Dungeons & Dragons they had on the market these days. The text was from Seema.
COME TO THE GYM @ 5. BRING YOUR SWIM TRUNKS.
* * *
—
BARRY’S GYM took up a nondescript double-wide town house and had a fifty-meter lap pool in the basement which was pretty much private. You could reserve a swim lesson for children, but tonight he did not see an instructor. Barry knew what he had to do. He had to represent his value to his wife. He had to teach Shiva how to swim.
No one could fill out a bathing suit like Seema. She wasn’t the skinny type the junior traders in his office used to crow about, showing off photos in which they counted their girlfriends’ ribs or pointed out something called the thigh gap. Seema had small rolls of fat under her arms and the equivalent around her ass, and her thighs touched, but her turquoise one-piece sang of youthful warmth, the deep dark thread of her cleavage was honest and real, and he could see the outlines of her large nipples. If they could only be alone together in the pool, some pool, any body of water.
But they were not alone. In addition to the Latino lifeguard nodding off into the middle distance (how dare he ignore Seema’s beauty?), she had brought Shiva, who stared at the pool’s steady ripples of water with wonder verging on terror, his usual mode. His son wore a goofy-looking swimsuit studded with pink crab shells, beneath which peeked out a swim diaper. Seema held him slightly in front of her because you couldn’t really hug him without consequence, or at least you had to work your way toward a hug with the aid of a ho
rsehair brush and untold amounts of patience. But Barry could see that the child liked the water in some fundamental way, his little brown legs stroking the surface, delighting in the feeling of relative weightlessness, a place where the cruelties of the sensory world were lessened. “I’m going to start calling you the Aqua Rabbit,” Barry said, coming closer to the boy, until the three of them stood next to one another, as if posing for an awkward family portrait.
Seema dipped her son into the pool and then pulled him out very quickly. She did it again and again, until his initial shudders built up to a happy squeal. The motion was regulating him. This was going to be a joyous occasion that Seema would never forget. “Shiva Rabbit,” he announced, “right now I’m going to teach you a little bit about swimming. Daddy was a swimmer in high school and in college and maybe one day you can be, too. So just watch this.” He dove into the water and crisply made his way to the other end of the pool in about ten seconds, flipped over, and made his way back to his family. He hoped Seema was minding his form, the graceful kicks that generated only a modicum of splash, the torque of his shoulders, the crisp half turn of his neck when he took a quick breath. But when he surfaced he realized no one had been looking at him. Seema was still dipping Shiva into the water, each dip followed by a screech of delight on the boy’s part.
“Okay,” Barry said. “Daddy’s turn.”
He reached over to pick up his son. “Easy,” Seema said.
“I know what I’m doing,” Barry said. “I just taught another boy how to swim.”
“He’s not another boy,” she said. Which was true. As soon as Barry’s hands were placed under Shiva’s armpits, the boy began to kick backward and flap his arms forward like some maddened dolphin. Barry quickly turned to look at the lifeguard, to see if he had registered that his son was different. Seema slipped her hands under Shiva’s arms and he calmed down a little.
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